Robert E.

Seletsky

New light on the old bow2

The first part of this article appeared in the May 2004
issue.

Transitional bows and long bows

he long bow persisted until the end of the 18th
century, overlapping with the transitional/classical bows that appear in increasing numbers by c.1770.
Transitional bows have no set measurements; they
are as various as the bows that preceded them.
However, they are all designed to function in musically similar ways; they continue the logic of the long
bow in further raising the head, creating so-called
hatchet or battle-axe profiles, and, not infrequently, foreshortened and extremely high swan-bill
heads; a considerable number of bows with this latter
head shape are fluted as well (illus.11c). Interestingly,
one occasionally encounters incurved high-headed
transitional bows built with the old convex hump
near the head for added flexibility in that area. In
transitional bows, the sticks were heated and systematically bent inward to add spring and resistance, and
to counterbalance the extended hair-to-stick distance inherent in the new head designs. In 1791
Galeazzi mentions the use of cambre in the type of
bow he recommends (clearly a transitional model; he
acknowledges the wide variety of bows in use):

I would want the bow either to be straight, or to be low at the

frog and high at the point. This can be achieved by introducing
a small amount of curve toward the point. A bow thus constructed has the same strength at the point as at the heel, which
seems to me a very considerable advantage.1

Interestingly, high-headed cambred bows seem

to have the opposite characteristic to Galeazzis

ideal: often his combination leads to glassiness in

the upper part of the bow, while original lowerheaded, largely un-cambred long bows are much
more consistent from frog to point. It is almost
certain that the original cambre applied to most
transitional and early modern bows was far less pronounced than that which came into use later.
Although, as indicated earlier, cambre can relax over
time or can be deliberately augmentedmost bows
being subjected to the latterit is impossible not to
observe that in all 18th-century pictures of violinists
with transitional bows, the sticks are straight, not
incurved, at playing tension. Some are even slightly
convex under tension, indicating that there was not
even cambre deep enough for appropriate playing
tension with the stick tightened only to appear
straight (see illus.15 and 18). Typically, even todays
period specialists consider bows with their modest
cambre too flexible.
Pernambucoa superior species of what makers
now call brazilwoodand, less often, ironwood
were generally used for these thicker concave sticks
rather than snakewood: pernambuco because it is
lighter, ironwood because it is less stiff. Many shortcomings of the materials could be circumvented by
the inward cambre; pernambuco, previously used primarily to dye leather and as ships ballast, was also far
less expensive than snakewood. Many transitional
models are shorter than the long bows, and are usually
less weighty despite thicker graduations, owing to pernambucos diminished density compared with snakewood; they frequently have narrower hair-widths,
although as the century progressed, these bows were

Robert E. Seletsky is an independent scholar and baroque violinist. His published work appears in
New Grove II (2000), Early music, Opera quarterly, The new Harvard dictionary of music, Recent
Researches in the Music of the Classical Era and elsewhere.

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11 Three screw-frog transitional bow designs, c.177585: (a) battle-axe head, pernambuco stick, rounded (earlier)
open-channel ivory frog and button; length 73.0 cm (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Hill Collection no.24); (b) late
battle-axe/hatchet head, pernambuco stick, rectangular (later) ivory open-channel frog and button, stamped DODD,
probably John Dodd, London; length 73.4 cm (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Hill Collection no.27); (c) modified
swan-bill head, fluted pernambuco stick, rectangular (later) open-channel ebony frog and ivory (or bone) button,
attributed to Tourte L; length 73.8 cm (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Hill Collection no.26). All bow lengths include
button.

12 Hair attachments and widths: (a)

clip-in (b) open-channel screw-frog
(c) modern closed-channel screw-frog.

designed to be longer and heavier, with wider hair

channels (illus.11, 12). The bounced bow-strokes in the
music of Haydn, Mozart, the Mannheim school composers and others, seem to have been responsible for
the introduction of the transitional bows, which performed these effects more naturally than the long
bows. It was formerly suggested that cantabile playing
was the catalyst, but it is the long bows that sink
smoothly into the string, hence Le Blancs 1740 remark
about seamless bow-changes.
Even at this stage, Tartinis name was associated
with the bows development, with the term Tartini
bow now inaccurately applied to the early transitional
bow as it had been to the long bow a quarter of a
century earlier. In December 1760, after a visit to

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Padua, the German writer Christoph Gottlieb von

Murr described Tartinis new bow as resembling a
soap-cutters knife (Seifensiederdrthe).2 It is significant that in 1760, generally thought nowadays to be
well into the period of transitional bow usage,
Tartinis second bow, preserved in Trieste, with minimal transitional featuresreally a clip-in long bow
with a somewhat heightened swan-bill head and a
minimal amount of cambreshould be viewed with
curiosity and surprise, indicating that transitional
traits were not at all common. Indeed, a very photographic anonymous Italian portrait of Tartini in
middle age shows him holding a convex pike-head
long bow (illus.13), not the type of bow with which
he is anecdotally associated, nor which is shown in

13 Tartini in mid-life with convex pike-head bow.

Anonymous mid-18th-century Italian painting. (Museo
degli Strumenti. Musicali, Milan, Italy. Credit: RogerViollet, Paris /www.bridgeman.co.uk)

the famous commemorative Calcinotto engraving

of Tartini, c.1770. The head of the bow in the anonymous painting is identical with the head of his
old long bow now in Trieste. Although the pegbox
in the paintingthe instruments only visible part
obviously belongs to a viola damore, bows for
braccio instruments were often used interchangeably.

Tartinis bows
As we have seen, the Tartini bow is something of a
puzzle and a recurring theme throughout the 18th
and 19th centuries, its attributes different almost
every time it is mentioned. While many of its alleged
traitsgreater length and head height, reeding,
straight stick, or screw-frog3were simply characteristics of the evolving bow and have nothing

specifically to do with Tartini, there is one claim

regarding his relationship to the bow that may be
revealing: He had his bows cut from much lighter
wood.4 It was stated earlier that fluting generally
was applied to octagonal bow sticks. The upper twothirds of Tartinis long bow preserved in Trieste are
reportedly octagonal but not fluted, and the shank is
round to accommodate the reserve for the clip-in
frog. Unfluted octagonal bows were anomalous during the period of this bows creation; an explanation
might be that the maker had over-thinned the stick
and realized that any attempt to round or flute it
would produce a bow that was too weak. However,
in revisiting a letter from the administrator of the
Conservatorio di Musica G. Tartini in Trieste I
noticed an unusual statistic:5 the bow is 71.5 cm
long but weighs only 37.5 grams including a 5 gram
boxwood clip-in frog (though excluding perhaps
3 grams of hair). Although one could certainly
understand a makers reluctance to round or flute a
bow of such perplexing delicacy, it is unlikely that he
would have erred so far from the usual weights of
4555 grams.
The bow is constructed of legno santo rossomarrone scuro (dark red-brown holy wood), not
the usual, much heavier snakewood, ironwood, or
ebony of the period. The term holy wood is encountered in period references to violin making, but has
never definitively been identified. Period violin pegs
have sometimes been described as having been made
of holy wood, possibly a species of rosewood, sonamed because it gives off the aroma of roses when
cut; but none of its species are so light as to produce
the weight of Tartinis bow. The Spanish refer to a
particular South American tropical hardwood as
holy woodPalo Santo or Bulnesia sarmiento, probably because of its singular perfumed aroma when
cut.6 It may be the same as South American perfume
wood, which has been considered for bow-making
(though I have never encountered it). If the report
is accurate, Tartinis clip-in early transitional bow is
also constructed of legno santo, and with the frog, its
71.4 cm length weighs a mere 40 grams. It is difficult
to imagine bows over 71 cm long functioning at such
diminished weights, particularly as Tartinis long
bow has no cambre for added resilience, and the
transitional bow has very little.

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In his Rules for Bowing, Tartini advises that the

violinist Always use the middle of the bow, never
play near the point or heel,7 an understandable
recommendation coming from a violinist with such
slight bows. According to Charles Burney, Tartinischool players were more remarkable for delicacy,
expression and high finishing, than for spirit and
variety.8 Tartinis support for constrained bow use is
contrary to Geminianis admonition that The best
Performers are those who are least sparing of their
Bow; and make Use of the whole of it, from the Point
to that Part of it under, and even beyond the
Fingers9 or the long, uninterrupted, soft, and flowing stroke advocated by Leopold Mozart.10 Indeed,
the Mozarts, while apparently respecting Tartini
Leopold even reusing some of his material outright
in his Violinschulewere never entirely satisfied with
Tartinis pupils small, constricted sound, and refer
to it in a number of letters. On the cover of a letter to
Lorenz Hagenauer dated 11 July 1763, Leopold writes
of a certain [Pietro] Nardini (172293), who plays
with purity, evenness of tone and singing quality,
adding, But he plays rather lightly.11 In a letter to
Leopold dated 6 October 1777, W. A. Mozart makes a
number of negative, though not ill-natured, remarks
about the playing of Tartinis pupil Charles Albert
Dupreille (172896): We first played Haydns two
quintets, but to my dismay I found I could hardly
hear him.12 In another letter to his father dated
27 August 1778 Mozart says of Paul Rothfischer, a
violinist in the service of the Princess of NassauWeilburg, that he plays well in his way (a little bit in
the old-fashioned Tartini manner).13
It seems, therefore, that Tartini not only taught
his pupils to use little of the bows length, but also
little pressure. Tartini instructs that the bow should
be held firmly between the thumb and forefinger,
and lightly by the other fingers, in order to produce
a strong, sustained tone.14 Tartinis concepts were
certainly not universally accepted; Leopolds recommended bow grip disparages the Tartini method
without naming him:
The bow is taken in the right hand, at its lowest extremity,
between the thumb and the middle joint of the index-finger,
or even a little behind it The little finger must lie at all
times on the bow, and never be held freely away from the
stick, for it contributes greatly to the control of the bow and

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therefore to the necessary strength and weakness, by means of

pressing and relaxing. Both those who hold the bow with the
first joint of the index finger and those who lift up their little
finger, will find that the above-described method is far more
apt to produce an honest and virile tone from the violin if
they be not too stubbornly attached to another method to try
this one.15

Clearly, Geminiani, the Mozarts and most other

players who used bows of normal woods did not
need to evolve rarefied bowing techniques of only
qualified success. As no bows quite like his seem
to have survived, Tartini may be an example of a
teacher adapting his playing to irregular equipment
and subsequently making a method of it for students with normal bows. Although it evidently held
a certain fascination for listeners, it is not really surprising that Tartinis style died out; it is at odds with
virtually every other method. The contrast between
Tartini, who advocated a small, delicate tone using
a fraction of a long bow with little pressure, and
Corelli, who demanded a full tone using every
millimetre of a short bow, is especially striking; it is
very important to note their polar opposition
because historians have often thrown them
together, David Boyden even referring to the
CorelliTartini bow.16 Writers descriptions of a
Tartini bow then, appear to be the result of misplaced attempts at identifying various bows with a
peculiar playing techniquein a sense, confusing
cause and effect, hence the application of the term
to several different bow types. They should properly
have referred to Tartini bowing instead. Although
players adjusted their bow choices as dictated by
time and taste, the only known genuine Tartini
bows were Tartinis.

Identifications and adaptations

Clearly, bows were made throughout Europe, but
extant bows of the 18th and 17th centuriesthe
latter very minimal in any caseseem to be English
or French. As yet, experts have scant means of identifying the constructional features of early bows that
may originate elsewhere. There are templates for
clip-in frogs and heads from the Stradivari workshop now in the Museo Stradivariano, Cremona; the
collection also houses a single actual ebony clipin frog (item no.478) and a maple model of a low

14 The violin bows evolution shown in Woldemar, Grande Mthode drawings, c.1798: (a) short: Corelli; (b) long:
Tartini; (c) transitional: Cramer; (d) modern: Viotti. Compare these with the bows in part I, illus.8

swan-bill type bow head (item no.499). Although

this material is not enough to draw any conclusions
even about Stradivaris bows, there is one notable
unusual feature of frog construction: the top edge
that would meet the stick is as much as 1 cm longer
than the hair channel edge, perhaps to yield that
much more playing hair length, the reverse of what
one sees on surviving frogs from all other sources;
half of the Stradivari shop templates display this
feature, as does the one surviving frog.17 One hopes
more objects that can be identified as Italian (or
German) will come to light. The existence of largely
English and French early bows may indicate that
London and Paris were focal points of instrumentmaking and technology even early on, perhaps
yielding better or more refined bows thought most
worthy of preserving, and (as so many documents
already show) that there was a lively export trade in
bowed string instruments.
In the introductory chapter to his Grand Mthode
pour le violon (Paris, 1798), Michel Woldemar
(17501818) presents four rather accurately drawn
illustrations that trace the history of the bow: short

(Corelli), long (Tartini), transitional (Cramer),

Tourte (Viotti)see illus.14.18 Reputed to own
bows of each type, Woldemar claimed that the transitional model associated with virtuoso Wilhelm
Cramer (174599), active in London during the
1770s and 1780s, was adopted in his time by a majority of artists and amateurs. When in 1801 Woldemar
wrote the preface to a revised version of Leopold
Mozarts Violinschule, with a few more, but far less
accurateeven caricaturedbow illustrations, he
mentions Frnzl as well as Cramer in connection
with this type of bow.19 Like Cramer, virtuoso violinist Ignaz Frnzl (17361811) was a member of the
Mannheim orchestra, whose playing was enthusiastically admired by W. A. Mozart.20 In an anonymous
painting of Pietro Nardini that must date from
c.1770, the upper half of a Cramer-style bow is seen.
The head shape and even the ivory plate on the face
of its battle-axe head can easily be distinguished; the
stick looks convex, over-tightened perhaps to compensate for insufficient cambre (illus.15). The transitional bow of this type, with mirrored peak and
throat on its battle-axe head and a delicate ivory

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15 Pietro Nardini and Cramer-style bow, c.1770 (Milan,

Museo Teatrale alla Scala (Costa))

frog of typical French design similarly, and often

ornately, hollowed at both endsas in Woldemars
illustration, is one of many similar variations made
by craftsmen in the two centres of mid- to late
18th-century bow-making: in ParisDuchaine,
Meauchand, and Tourte L. among them;21 in
LondonEdward, John and James Dodd, Thomas
Tubbs, Thomas Smith and others. Although few
bows of the period were stamped in comparison
with those made in the 19th centurybow types
identified by the names of famous players thought
to have used themas we see, the transitional bows
are the first to bear a stamp more routinely, even if
the stamps are as likely to identify the firm for which
the maker worked, especially in Britain: Banks,
Betts, Forster, Longman & Broderip, Norris &
Barnes. The bows shown in illus.8c, 11a and 11b
would all have been considered Cramer bows in
the period, despite vastly different weights, lengths
and characteristics; identifying whole genres of cosmetically related bows with individual performers is
very misleading. Interestingly, a transitional bow
of c.1770, attributed to Tourte L., is yet another

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ascribed to Tartinis ownership; if he was indeed its

owner, he acquired it at the end of his life.22 And
while G. B. Viotti (17551824) is widely, and perhaps
accurately, regarded as the early champion of the
new Franois Tourte bow, the model even referred
to as a Viotti bow by Woldemar and others, a post1800 pen-and-wash drawing shows the celebrated
violinist holding what seems to be a swan-billheaded long bow (illus.16).23
For much of the 20th century, pre-transitional
bows were thought to have been regarded as disposable accessories, long bows retained only when they
were aesthetically pleasing. Such an assumption contradicts the conservative, even frugal, aesthetic of the
17th and 18th centuries. Even if ordinary bows were
accessories provided with instruments at the time of
purchase, as more and more long bows come to light,
it seems that they were not considered to be disposable. While many long bows did survive because of
visual artistic merit or precious materials, there is
also a sizable extant body of unremarkable bows,
many with clumsy period repairs, demonstrating
that if a bow could conceivably be useful, it would be
preserved. The periods repugnance for casual disposal thus does appear to extend to bows. Long bows,
like violins, were very often refitted to accommodate
changing musical requirements. Probably during the
third quarter of the 18th century, clip-in frogs were
replaced with screw-frogs, frequently in the French
manner: the sticks clip-in frog-seating was filled
with a flat ivory slip through which a mortise was cut
into the stick; the eyelet of the frog would ride in this
mortise, adjusted by an added screw-button, the end
of the stick drilled out to accept it. The flat ivory plate
was typically equipped with a metal stabilizing pin
fitted into a small channel on the underside of the
frog to keep it from swivelling. A well-known example is the elaborate pandurina-shaped ivory frog,
almost certainly of French provenance, c.1775, on the
well-known anonymous long bow, c.1740, in the
collection of the University of California at Berkeley;
once erroneously dated c.1700 and attributed to
Antonio Stradivari, its fluted 71.1 cm stick (including
the c.1775 decorative ivory screw-button), though formerly thought to be made of pernambuco, is probably constructed of unfigured snakewood.24 Bows like
this generally had their cambre increased, often in an
imprecise manner, to enable the bounced strokes

16 G. B. Viotti apparently with a long bow after 1800; penand-wash drawing ( Copyright The British Museum)

natural to transitional bows. A few short bows survive

with the modifications of augmented cambre and
screw-frogs, but because total length cannot be modified, they ultimately did fall into disuse and were
largely discarded late in the 18th century. The new
small, differently weighted low frogs and added

cambre on refitted long bows obscure their genuine

intended musical traits, their responses, balances and
playing hair lengths radically altered. Bows thus modified are not infrequently copied by uninformed
contemporary makers and mistakenly presented to
period-instrument performers as Baroque bows.
It has been common to believe in the nearimpossibility of assigning reasonably accurate dates
to early bows. On a certain level this may be true, as
short and long clip-in bows were available simultaneously throughout most of the 18th century, overlapping with transitional types. However, one rather
obvious piece of evidence that seems to have been
overlooked is the method of frog attachment. As
indicated here, screw-frogs riding on flat ivory plates
were used to modernize clip-in bows; this frog design
also seems to have been a customary early way of creating new screw-frog bows. One also sees other 18thcentury methods, like a flat frog attachment with
or without stabilizing pin directly mounted to the
flattened underside of the stick, or a frog with a round
underside fitted to the round shank of the stick
a rather unstable approach until J. B. Vuillaume
(17981875) rethought it in the mid-19th century,
using a round attachment of smaller diameter or
slightly oval shape that yielded flat rails on the edges
of the stick to hold the frog securely in place. The
most familiar attachment, used exclusively today,
wherein the frog rides on three facets of a sticks
octagonal shank, seems to have appeared later, c.1775.
A bow with an original attachment of this type, no
matter what the head design, whether fluted or not,
was therefore made no earlier than the late 18th century. If the lower part of a bow is octagonal, even
with an original French flat frog underside/ ivory
plate/stabilizing pin configuration, a late date may
also be indicated. Many bows that have earlier features but were built with octagonal shanks and threefaceted frog attachments survive; typically they are
longer than true early 18th-century bows, they can be
noticeably cambred, with more massive pike/swan
heads that have throats not infrequently perpendicular to the hair, and frogs with more modern rectangular shapes. Their existence demonstrates that players
were unwilling to part entirely with the familiar, thus
creating a market for bows that were hybrids of longbow and transitional-bow technologies, presumably

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so that players could negotiate both older and new

music.25 Further, it indicates again that modern makers need to be circumspect when choosing period
bows upon which to model their copies if they are
seeking to create genuine earlier-style bows. A
famous painting of Gaetano Pugnani (173198) is
usually assigned a date of c.1754 because the music
visible in it is the first violin part of his Trio Sonatas,
op.1, a Parisian publication of 1754. However, the
shank of his bow shown clearly has a later, nearly rectangular screw-frog of dark wood (ebony?) with flat,
round, or possibly even a faceted attachment
mounted directly to the stick without an ivory plate:
the hair terminates at the middle of the frog, not continuing around it as in a clip-in design. The button is
of lathe-turned dark wood. Pugnani is dressed in the
attire of the Turin court. He succeeded his late
teacher Somis as leader of the court orchestra (and
the Teatro Regio) in 1770,26 so it seems logical to
assume that the painting would commemorate that
auspicious occasion, and thus have a date no earlier
than 1770, consistent with the above chronology of
screw-frog attachments. The music from his first set
of trio sonatas may be open simply because it was his
first published success, or, because the open page
clearly reads Violino Primo, a status that he had
attained at the Turin court in 1770 (illus.17).

Transitional terminus
The model of Franois Tourte (17471835), originating in the 1780s, is at 74.5 cm, 14 cm longer than
most transitional bows. (Note that, for consistency,
total lengths shown here include the movable
buttonabout 1.5 cmwhich luthiers sometimes
omit from cited bow lengths.) Tourtes bow was the
experiment that eventually became the standard, the
first time a bow-makers design served as a specific
model for continuing generations of subsequent
makers. Often with stronger graduations, sometimes
more pronounced cambre, and a closed, sharply
rectangular frog with a mother-of-pearl slide, and a
silver or gold ferrule and heel-plate (illus.12c), the
Tourte bow, at 5760 grams, is heavier than most of
its predecessors; the hatchet head is similar to contemporary models, but never with mirrored peak
and throat. Although this type of bow ultimately
eclipsed all previous designs, various transitional

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bows were made well into the 19th century throughout Europe, notably in England by members of the
Dodd and Tubbs families. Cost was often the motive
for this variation: frogs with mother-of-pearl slides
and ferrules of precious metals are more expensive to
produce than plain open-channel ones. A lithograph
of c.1820 by Karl Begas (17941854) clearly shows
Nicol Paganini (17821840) using a bow with an
early transitional battle-axe head (illus.18), extremely
similar to the head of Hill Collection no.24 in
illus.11a.27
We are thus presented with a very different
picture of the violin bows history from c.1625 to
1800. The previously accepted idea was that players
were continually dissatisfied with the bow, impatiently seeking changes. However, a thoughtful look
at extant objects and sources, both written and
iconographic, indicates instead the reluctance of
players to part with familiar, well-functioning bows.
The short bow, now generally relegated to the

17 Gaetano Pugnani in Turin court attire with screw-frog bow (1770 or later) (Royal College of Music, London)

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18 Paganini playing bow with transitional battle-axe head,

Karl Begas lithograph, c.1820 (note similarity with head
of bow shown in illus.11a). (Haags Gemeentemuseum,
Netherlands/www.bridgeman.co.uk)
This paper is expanded from my article
Bow c.16251800 published in New
Grove II (2000), originally researched
between 1995 and 1997. Grateful
acknowledgement is made to Professor
Neal Zaslaw of Cornell University, whose
unpublished materials referring to the
Tartini bow, assembled during the
1970s, were key in the genesis of my own
researches. I tender my gratitude as well
to luthier and organologist Ian Watchorn
of Melbourne, Australia, for calling my
attention to many period bows in
European and Australian collections; to
the fine period bow-maker and violinist
Stephen A. Marvin of Toronto, Canada,
for his encouragement and generous
exchange of ideas and information; and
to David L. Hawthorne of Cambridge,
Massachusetts, a great bow-maker, for
helpful citations and gratifying
collaborations.
1 Francesco Galeazzi, Elementi
teoretico-pratici di musica con un saggio
larte del suonare il violino analizzata,
ed a dimostrabili principi ridotta
(Rome, 1791), pp.767, sec. 18, quoted
in P. Walls, Mozart and the violin,
Early music, xx (1992), pp.1820.

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performance of music from only the earliest years of

the 17th century, loomed much larger in its day; it
seems to have been players preferred bow until
c.1750. The long bow apparently began life as a specialty item, used first by some soloists, and generally
accepted only when musical styles changed so radically that the short bow really seemed impractical.
The late 18th-century period of transition appears
now to have been relatively short, beginning somewhat tentatively around 1760. The idea of the highheaded, inward-cambred bow was an experiment
that makers attempted, each in his own way, while at
the same time producing the long bows that were
very much in favour; the model of Franois Tourte
was simply the most widely accepted result of this
ubiquitous experimentation. Although Tourtes
work is brilliant, its lasting success is doubtless
partly the result of the nationalist consolidation of
French arts and commerce after the Revolution that
established the Conservatoire, as well as the position
of Paris as perhaps the longest-lived artistic centre in
Europe.

2 Quoted in E. L. Gerber, Neues

Lexikon der Tonknstler (181214), iv,
col.372; cited in Neal Zaslaws
unpublished notes. Period pictures of
soap-cutters kniveslarge unwieldy
objectsshow that von Murrs
analogy was either between the bows
and implements head shapes or the
resemblance of the bows even hair-tostick distance to the parallel edges of
the soap-cutting device.
3 See n.12 in Part I.
4 H. Abele, Die Violine, ihre Geschichte
und ihr Bau (Neuberg an der Donau,
1874), trans. J. Broadhouse as The
violin: its history and construction
illustrated & described from many
sources (London, [1923]), pp.11415.
I chose this late version of the
attribution at random, but the
sentiment echoes throughout the
late 18th and much of the 19th
centuries.
5 The letter was written to Neal
Zaslaw on 26 November 1969 by
Dr Aldo Baldini (Capo dei Servizi di
Segretaria, Amministrativi e
Contabili).

august 2004

6 See the website

www.patagonbird.com/generic.html?pid

12 : Palo santo, or holy wood in
Spanish, is a naturally perfumed
wood, found only in the Argentine
and Paraguayan Chaco. Green and
amber in color, it emits a clean, fresh
scent unlike any other wood. When
polished, it gets a smooth glow that
makes the wood look like the cats
eye stone. Indian people believed
that a couple who wanted to get
married, had to plant a palo santo.
If the plant grew normally, it meant
that they would have a happy
marriage. The tree blooms in April
and May. Referring to a plant as
holy often seems related to its
aromatic qualities: both the Italians
and Thai refer to their native species
of the herb basil as holy basil. In the
case of that herb and this tropical
hardwood, there is clearly an
association with the incense used in
religious practices.
7 Giuseppe Tartini, Regole per arrivare
a saper ben suonar il violino, in Trait des
agrments de la musique, ed. E.R. Jacobi
(Celle & New York, 1961), p.57.

8 Charles Burney, The Present State of

Music in Germany, the Netherlands,
and United Provinces (London, 2/1775;
R/New York, 1969), p.175.
9 Francesco Geminiani, The Art of
Playing on the Violin (London, 1751;
R/1951), p.2.
10 Leopold Mozart, Violinschule
(Augsburg, 1756); trans. E. Knocker
(London, 1948), p.60.
11 The letters of Mozart and his family,
trans. E. Anderson (London, 1938;
3/New York, 1985), p.24.
12 The letters of Mozart and his family,
trans. Anderson, p.300.
13 The letters of Mozart and his family,
trans. Anderson, p.607.
14 Tartini, Regole per arrivare a saper
ben suonar il violino.
15 Leopold Mozart, Violinschule, p.58.
16 D. D. Boyden, The violin bow in
the 18th century, Early music, viii
(1980), p.200.
17 Copies of photos from the Museo
Stradivariano, Cremona collection
were graciously shared with me by
period bow-maker Stephen A. Marvin.
18 Revised second edition: Michel
Woldemar, Grand Mthode ou tude
lmentaire pour le violon (Paris, 2/1800).
19 Woldemars table in the 1801
revision of Leopold Mozarts
Violinschule contains crudely drawn
bows with inaccurate information,
even asserting that Tartinis bow
(grotesquely represented) was the one
adopted by Locatelli. Several tables of
pre-Tourte bows appear in the 19th
century, notably by Pierre Baillot in
Lart du violon (Paris, 1834) and F-J.
Ftis, in Antoine Stradivari, luthier
clbre (Paris, 1856). Less distorted than
those in Woldemars second chart,
Baillots representations attempt to
characterize the various permutations
of transitional bow as distinct objects,
assigning further obscure 18th-century
violinists to them; he misses the point
that all transitional bows were simply
different makers versions of the same
aesthetic. The genuinely repugnant
caricatures in the chart by Ftis
deliberately depict fictitious preCorelli bows attributed to obscure
musicians like Bassani and Kircher,
whose names Ftis obviously used

without the slightest idea of who they

really were and when they lived. As
irresponsible in these crude drawings,
bows starting with Corelli seem to
have screw-frogs, the earlier ones
crmaillre and clip-in. Following the
first Woldemar chart, the obvious
motivation was the prejudicial
deprecation of all bows prior to
Tourte as primitive and unmusical.
Even though the first book on the
bow, H. Saint-George, The bow, its
history, manufacture and use (London,
1889), contains very accurate sketches
(pp.25, 29) of the bows shown in
illus.8a and b of part 1 of this article,
the author finds it necessary to follow
his description of illus.8b (Part I) as
extremely elegant with the phrase
but useless as a bow; ignorance and
bias again won the day, as illus.8b (in
my collection), with different but
equal strengths as a genuine Franois
Tourte bow, is no less brilliant a
musical tool.
20 The letters of Mozart and his
family, trans. Anderson, p.384: letter
(W. A. to L. Mozart) of 22 November
1777. Frnzl joined the Mannheim
orchestra in 1747, becoming its leader
in 1774. When the court was
transferred to Munich in 1778, Frnzl
remained in Mannheim and was
musical director of the Nationaltheater
from 1790 to 1803: quoted from The
letters of Mozart and his family, p.383,
n.1. Cramer was in Mannheim from
1757 through 1772. He is only
mentioned in passing by Leopold in
a letter to his son on 9 February
1778: The letters of Mozart and his
family, p.473.
21 Tourte L. was originally thought
to be Louis TourteTourte pre,
father of the famous Franois, but the
current thinking is that L. is Nicolas
Lonard, Franoiss older brother;
their father was Nicolas Pierre, so the
son distinguished himself from the
elder Nicolas by using his middle
initial in his stamp. These findings
appear in B. Millant, Larchet: les
Tourte et les archetiers franais,
17501950, 3 vols. (Paris, 2000), (text) i,
pp.8797.
22 The bow in question is shown in
E. vander Straeten, History of the violin
(London, 1933), i, opposite p.33. The
bow has a ferrule, almost certainly a

e a r ly mu sic

au g u st 2 0 04

42 5

later addition, with the word Tartini

gracefully engraved on it.
23 What is most interesting is the
clearly late date, given the style of
dress, for the depiction of a long bow.
24 The mania for Antonio Stradivari
that was created by maker/dealers like
Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume (17981875) and
clever dealers to this day, has given rise
to many absurd claims. There are at
least two other bows that were
attributed to Stradivari, regardless of the
fact that bows were never stamped; the
provenance of these bows is unknown,
and there has never been a bow shown
to be related to Stradivari or even his
workshop. They can both be seen in W.
Henry, Arthur F. and Alfred E. Hill,
Antonio Stradivari: his life and work
(London, 1902; R/New York, 1963),
p.208. One of these inlaid, probably
19th-century, fantasy bows was acquired
in the last decade by the Shrine to Music
Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota,
Item no.4882.
25 One such hybrid violin bow that has
been popular as a model for modern
makers is an English bow in the

42 6

early mu si c

Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

It was often assigned a date of c.1740,
but the original three-faceted frog
attachment, organic cambre, throat
perpendicular to the hair, and late
rectangular design of the original frog
indicate a date no earlier than c.1780.
Yet it still is used as a Baroque bow by
many misinformed violinists. See G.
Thibault, J. Jenkins and J. Bran-Ricci,
Eighteenth century musical instruments:
France and Britain (London, 1973),
catalogue no.38; called a pardessus de
viole there, obviously a randomly
chosen description as that instrument
was used virtually exclusively in
France, and only much earlier in the
18th century. Another example of a late
bow mistaken for an earlier one is Hill
Collection no.20; an octagonal stick
with its upper two-thirds fluted, and
labelled bass viol bow c.174050, the
apparent three-faceted frog
attachment, smooth cambre, and
throat perpendicular to the hair
indicate that it cannot have been made
before c.1775, by which date it would
have to be a cello bow, the viol
long gone.

august 2004

26 B. Schwarz, Gaetano Pugnani,

New Grove I.
27 Before drawing any conclusions
about Paganini, no matter how
exciting, it is important to look at the
lithograph a bit more cautiously and
analytically. Although the head of the
bow is of an early transitional model,
and the bow is tightened so that the
hair is parallel with the apparently
slender stick, it is also clear that the
sharply rectangular frog is of a
modern variety. Therefore, although
the lithograph appears almost
photographic, Begas seems to have
combined elements that may not
represent Paganini and his bow
accurately. Violin expert Jaak
(Liivoja-) Lorius comments in The
Strad, xciii (1982), p.377, that
Paganini was said to prefer his
accustomed bows by Pierre Sirjean
(1765after 1820), even when offered
more valuable bows by J. B. Vuillaume
at no charge later in his life. Of the few
identifiable Sirjean bows, all are of the
Tourte variety, none with any
transitional features.